Iranian Company Pleads Guilty to U.S. Export Violation
An officer of Falcon Instrumentation & Machinery FZE, an Iranian corporation formerly known as FIMCO (Falcon/FIMCO) , entered a plea of guilty on behalf of the corporation to conspiracy to evade export licensing requirements.
The conspiracy:
An attempt to smuggle to Iran a machine with possible military as well as civilian application. In April 2014, an American company, Hetran, Inc., an engineering and manufacturing corporation in Pennsylvania, and its President, Helmut Oertmenn, were charged with participating in the conspiracy.
Hetran manufactured a large horizontal lathe (‘peeler’) valued at more than $800,00 and weighing in excess of 50,000 pounds. The machine is used in the production of high grade steel for the manufacture of automobile and aircraft parts.
Under U.S. law and regulations, American companies are forbidden to ship ‘dual use’ items (items with both civilian and military or proliferation applications) like the ‘peeler’ to Iran without first obtaining a license from the U.S. Government. Aware that it was unlikely that such a license would be granted, Falcon/FIMCO, which does business in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and other alleged co-conspirators agreed to falsely state on the shipping documents the end-user of the peeler was an affiliated company, knowing that the machine would subsequently be shipped to Iran after being off-loaded in Dubai.
A plea agreement was reached with the U.S. Government and settlement made with BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security). To read about these details and the entire press release: DOJ
Leave a Reply